


Better To (Autumn Harvest Mix)

by inalasahl



Category: Firefly, Serenity (2005)
Genre: Autumn, BDM, Canon Death, Community: remixredux08, F/M, Het, Remix, Soup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-12
Updated: 2008-04-12
Packaged: 2017-10-03 16:33:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inalasahl/pseuds/inalasahl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wheel keeps turning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Better To (Autumn Harvest Mix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [better to light the candle](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14345) by [leiascully](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully). 



> Beta thanks go to llaras.

Zoe's grief is not a living thing, weighty with a constant presence. It's a sneak, attacking her when she least expects it. It jumps out at her from the cockpit when she goes to gather Wash for bed and finds River. It hits her over the head when she passes a market stall selling bright-flowered cloth and asks Wash if he wants a new shirt only to get silence in return. It even sneaks up behind her at dinner when she starts to cover a plate so his food doesn't get cold while he finishes setting up a course, and Kaylee asks her what she's doing.

Mal gets into a brawl on Dyton Colony for the honor of the Browncoats. Zoe's got his back, always. In the end they share three black eyes, one split lip, innumerable bruised knuckles and a cut cheek between them. They are also sticky from head to toe, covered in molasses. The unfortunate molasses barrel, which got caught in the fight and spilled out three-quarters of its contents, is owned by a very disgruntled young woman who threatens to call the sheriff unless Mal pays for the barrel and then some.

When they get back to the ship and try to explain what happened, they can only laugh until they gasp for air. That night they stay up in Mal's bunk reminiscing about the war until they fall to sleep entwined around each other.

She wakes sweaty, wrapped around a warm male body. Mal's eyes dart shyly away as he tries to keep her from noticing his morning erection. It's the best rest Zoe's had in a month. She goes back the next night and the next and the next.

Mal's code doesn't allow him to take, only to give. She decides to be the one, then, who turns to him one night, kissing hard and sweet into his mouth, groping at the scars she knows are on his body. He rubs his hands over her breasts and licks along her neck. Her fall comes as easy as lying in a trench watching apples rain from the sky.

* * *

Inara and Mal are still dancing around each other, but they've danced a bit closer lately. Zoe doesn't want to get in the way of that. She waits until Inara should be nearly done with Kaylee's hair, before knocking and asking if she can join in. She takes the chair when Kaylee's done; Inara swaps out her brush for a long-tailed comb to braid Zoe's hair flat against her head. It feels nice to be touched, reminds Zoe of getting her hair done by her sister when she was little. She leans into it a bit with a soft sigh.

Kaylee leaves to show off for Simon, and Inara's hands turn brisk, business-like. Her voice is matter-of-fact. "If you needed touch," she says, "I could make an exception."

She's almost got what Zoe came for, but she's not quite there. "You don't service crew," Zoe replies.

"Is that all we are? Crew?"

Inara's never been in the military, doesn't get that that's what a crew is, friend and family, everything you love and need and trust wrapped together. "Inara," Zoe says, "I prefer men."

"Ah," Inara replies. She wraps a band around the end of Zoe's hair. "Oh." Her hand stills for a moment, and then she's turning Zoe's head to kiss her cheek. Her lips curve into a perfect painted smile. "I understand need," she says. "And he's not my only either." She goes to her cabinet and takes out a box. "We'll just trade off," she says. She hands the box over to Zoe. "I heard you were looking for this," she goes on, subject closed. "A client of mine gifted me with it; I think he thought they were bath salts."

The box holds an entire eighth bushel of gypsum.

* * *

Their contact is sweaty and red-faced, staring anxiously at Vera, while he tries to explain why he doesn't have the goods he promised. Zoe feels a sharp flutter low beneath her belly, and the grief snaps at her sharp and strong.

"If, if there was an alternative, I could offer you," the contact sputters.

They're on Beaumonde, where tourists come from all over for Zhōngqiūjié, the moon festival, as its harvest time neatly coincides with the lunar calendar of Earth-that-Was. They salt duck eggs by the thousands here and ship them all over the system to be eaten whole or as paste in mooncakes. She likes their richer yolk and its dark orange color. "Duck eggs," she says.

"Duck eggs?" Mal, Jayne and the contact say it nearly in unison, but Zoe doesn't waver. "Fresh ones."

The contact smiles broadly, almost painfully relieved. "Of, of course," he says. He goes to the wall behind him and pulls out a bottle. Jayne and Mal twitch their trigger fingers alertly. "A toast to seal the deal?"

"None for me," Zoe says and gives Mal a look that says they'll talk later as his eyes look downward, noticing the slight curve of her body for the first time.

"Were you gonna tell me?" he snaps as they trudge home, set aback some.

"Tell you what?" Jayne asks, lighting his cigarillo one-handed, aiming his gun at every tree-gap along their route.

"Didn't think I needed to," Zoe says. "Thought you grew up on a ranch, sir." She shifts her hold and glares a bit of challenge at him. "You can carry this basket, if it'll make you feel better."

"Oh, no," Mal says. "That is your basket. You wanted eggs; you deal with it. I wasted good time I could have been working to get you those eggs." He takes five more steps. "Unless, unless you need me to carry..."

Jayne drops his gun at the unexpected chivalry. "Tell you what?" he demands again. His voice drops to a concerned whisper. "You sick?"

She'd be almost touched if it weren't, well, Jayne. She shakes her head at Mal with a teasing grin. "Thought you grew up on a ranch, sir," she repeats and takes a deep breath of clean air. The autumn leaves fall around them, orange and yellow, as the trees end one cycle and settle down to wait for the next.

Later on, he comes to her bunk, and doesn't ask who or when or how long. He just starts talking about making a cradle, seeing to it that Simon has everything he needs, and all the things Mal will teach the baby when he or she gets older.

When Zoe tucks her chin against his shoulder and corrects him gently (She assigns each of them a role: Jayne had better be the one to teach the mite to shoot; Inara, how to get a good deal; Kaylee, how to keep a ship in the air; River, figuring and how to fly; Simon, book-learning; and Zoe, herself; Mandarin.), he only pretends to splutter in indignation.

* * *

It's nearly dawn when they make planetfall by the little hill with its three graves. She gets there just in time to see the sun crest over the rise and the daylilies open in a riot of yellow. She lights the incense first, and talks for a good long while before she gathers the buds from the right-hand mound.

When she comes back, no one is surprised by her armful of flowers. Inara is showing River how to tell fresh tea from old, but moves to clear out of the galley as Zoe begins to wash her hands.

"Wait," she says, her thoughts turning inward. Zoe motions for Inara and River to wash their hands and begins laying out the ingredients, duck eggs from Beaumonde, fresh bean curd cake coagulated with Boros gypsum, soy sauce sweetened with Dyton Colony molasses, Cloud Ear Fungus from Greenleaf, daylily buds from a hill on a no-name moon and a whole season's worth of wanderings in edible form.

Just as plants never truly wither so long as they're re-seeded, nothing truly dies that is remembered. Zoe plans to live a good long while, but plans have a way of changing. Old ways must constantly make way for new beginnings. "I learned this from my father," Zoe says. "He learned it from my grandma, who learned it from her grand-auntie."

River gets down on her knees and presses one eyeball to Zoe's belly-button. "Aunties are important," she says.

Inara sets the water to boil and shares a smile with Zoe over River's head. "I've missed this from the House, " she says.

"Soup?" Kaylee asks as she comes through the doorway with grease stains on her cheek, wiping her hands on a rag.

Inara hands her the bottle of chili oil. "Companions," she answers.

The End

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a shipper story. It is a gen story with shippiness in it.
> 
> Zoe is making a 26th-century variant of hot &amp; sour soup.


End file.
